Vanuatu calls for UN probe of Papua abuses

Vanuatu’s Prime Minister has used his address at the United Nations General Assembly to urge the UN to appoint a special representative to probe alleged human rights abuses in Indonesia’s Papua region.
Moana Carcasses said that West Papuans have been consistently denied any sort of recognition by the UN for 50 years.
Comparing Papua to the UN’s preoccupation with the conflict in Syria, Mr Carcasses questioned how the world body can ignore what he says are hundreds of thousands of West Papuans who have been brutally beaten and murdered.
The Prime Minister has also reiterated Vanuatu’s longstanding support for the de-colonisation process in the Pacific.
He congratulated the UN on adding French Polynesia to its decolonisation list, adding that self-determination is an inalienable right for all peoples.
Mr Carcasses told the assembly that West Papuans must be granted this right, and urged the UN to revisit the process it sanctioned in the 1960s under which the former Dutch New Guinea was incorporated into Indonesia.